


we are but shipwrecked stars

by confidantes



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Gen, M/M, TYL, of course this is angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 13:33:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confidantes/pseuds/confidantes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They end up milling around Namimori Junior High, and Yamamoto laughs about maybe taking a peak inside, and Gokudera says, “Idiot, it’s a Saturday, there’s no way we’re getting in unless you’re talking about breaking and entering.” So that’s exactly what they do, because evidently seven years with the mafia has hardened Yamamoto into a stone-cold criminal with no apparent morals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are but shipwrecked stars

Yamamoto says something about wanting a day off, and Gokudera inevitably follows. 

They end up milling around Namimori Junior High, and Yamamoto laughs about maybe taking a peak inside, and Gokudera says, “Idiot, it’s a Saturday, there’s no way we’re getting in unless you’re talking about breaking and entering.” So that’s exactly what they do, because evidently seven years with the mafia has hardened Yamamoto into a stone-cold criminal with no apparent morals (and anyone who hears that will bark out a laugh, because Yamamoto? a criminal? Unthinkable. Even as a mafioso, Yamamoto is nothing but Kind and Good in ways that makes Gokudera’s heart crumple ever so slightly.).

"Ha," Yamamoto says with a laugh, "looks exactly the same as we left it. Hey, do you think Hibari-san ever visits?"

"If he did," Gokudera grumbles, "I wouldn’t want to be the kid who runs into him with his shirt untucked."

He’s dripping cigarette ash all over the tile floors, but neither of them care. The halls are nostalgic, oozing with dark, ancient magic. Here, Ryohei had punched a hole through the wall and spent the better of a week avoiding the wrath of one Disciplinary Committee Head. Here, Belphegor had carved butterfly knives into his ribs and he had returned from the billowing dust with the sole purpose of seeing his famiglia again.

Here,

is where he had fallen in love.

Yamamoto is throwing a door open with cavalier joy and yelling, “Hey, Hayato, look what they have here!”

"Keep your  _voice_ down, idiot,” he’s murmuring, but stops short of breath when he sees what Yamamoto’s enthusiastically pointing at.

It hadn’t been here when they schooled here. The baby grand, gleaming black from the center of the classroom, looks barely two years old. He’s so busy thinking of relics of the past that he almost misses Yamamoto’s inane grinning. “You know, I have to admit, I’ve always had a fantasy of you playing the piano for me. Like in those movies —”

"Shut the fuck up." He bites his bottom lip, pensive. "I haven’t played in years."

"What?" Here Yamamoto’s face slides into a visage of innocence so convincing it nearly throws Gokudera off. "Are you saying the great Gokudera Hayato, right hand man of the Vongola, is afraid of performing on the piano?"

"Oh for  _fuck’s_ —” He shoves a hand into Yamamoto’s guffawing face. “I should’ve never taught you how to be a smartass, it was the worst mistake of my life.” 

He doesn’t deny this was a good idea, though. Sitting at the piano, fingers perched over black-and-white eighty-eights, it’s like he never left the bench. This is how Yamamoto must feel at the pitch, eyes squaring down the catcher’s mitt, throwing a perfect game before the ball even leaves his hands. 

He wants to say,  _I haven’t played since my mother died,_ but what comes out of him instead is a series of lilting arpeggios, mournful and twisting and serpentine. The music fills his head, his hands, his heart, bursting with every note.

He stops halfway through a phrase. “I can’t remember the rest.”

"Wow. That was beautiful, Hayato."

"Liszt’s  _Liebestraum._ It’s beautiful without my even having to try.”

There’s silence and stillness, until Yamamoto slides over onto the bench, thigh-to-thigh. “Everything is going to be okay,” he says quietly.

Gokudera scoffs. “Don’t fucking do this to me — not you, least of all you. We’re not children anymore. There comes a day where everything isn’t sugar-coated anymore and you can’t believe the world will give you happy endings.”

The thing is, it’s never been sugar-coated. The thing is, he’s been searching for ways to shoulder Tsuna’s burdens, field the wounds and burns, since day one — it’s never been a game to him. The thing is, he’s known since they were fifteen that Yamamoto was the perfect hitman, that he could slice a man down with efficacy, and still smile through the next day like nothing had happened. Like they were just teenagers breaking into a school at night, searching for diamonds and lost memories in quiet rooms.

Says, “I should’ve been there with him.”

"He’ll be okay, Hayato —"

"He’s in the ICU with a coma. I don’t know what your definition of ‘okay’ is, but it certainly isn’t fucking that."

His shoulders tremble. Yamamoto wraps a gentle arm around them, presses kisses into the soft side of his neck.

"Everything will be okay," he says again, and this time, fingers clenched around Yamamoto’s waist, Gokudera believes it.


End file.
